Travelogue Pakistan 2007

Day 1, Aug 18, 2007 Skardu-Hushe: The transport picture to Khapalu had changed quite a bit from the last time I was here 7 years ago. Now there are wagons departing every hour from the Skardu main bazaar to Khapalu. I booked the “double” front seat on the 10 am one (Rs. 100 per seat) . The guy assured me that I would be able to find a van or some public transport to Hushe from Khapalu. The trip started out slowly as the driver wandered all over town picking up women and merchandise. Everybody seems to know everybody in these small towns and women get the cushy home pick-up service. I felt like an outsider and the police at several checkpoints obvoiusly felt the same way, since I was repeatedly asked to show ID. The scenery along the Indus was pretty much as I remembered it. Crumbly steep mountains and rubble-strewn desolate terrain with the Indus flowing closeby. The driver even stopped for tea in the same small town along the way. Mercifully there were no flat tires like the last time. We reached Khapalu in a couple of hours despite all the checkpoint and tea stops. The main road through town was now paved – a huge improvement over the dusty mess of my last visit. The driver tried to find some public jeep for Hushe but the best he could come up with was a cargo jeep going to Kande. The driver agreed to take me to Hushe as a “special hire” after he dropped off the other passengers in Kande. We agreed on Rs. 500 for the trip. I piled into the back and secured a place on top of some dusty sacks of wheat flour. There were 5 or 6 guys riding in the back. A couple of the lads and I had struck up a conversation along the way. One of them was studying a university in Karachi. They politely offered me a nice spot where I could rest my back against the cab. The front seats were empty but my attempt to secure them were rebuffed at any price. Apparently they were spoken for to a couple of “sick ladies”. The jeep had non-existent shocks and I mentally prepared myself for a bone-jarring jolty ride. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for as things went from crowded to the "Black-hole-of-Calcutta" levels. As the jeep trundled around town it kept picking up more and more passengers and cargo. Just as I thought we could fit no more people in there, someone else would pile on with a couple of sacks of sugar or flour. By the time we got out of Khapalu there were at least 10-12 people and many sacks of stuff crammed into a 4foot by 4 foot cargo area. People were hanging onto any hand or foothold they could find. An old woman tried to muscle in on my coveted spot but I deftly foiled her moves. She avenged this tactical defeat by sitting on my foot. However all this turf battle turned out to be for nought. The jeep had to stop at an army check point just outside town. The soldiers zeroed in on me as the obvious foreign-looking dude and asked me to step off the jeep. I managed to contort my way through the jam-packed mass of humanity to register inside the checkpost and show my ID yet again. The soldiers seemed very strict about registering trekkers. By the time I got back on the jeep my coveted spot was occupied by the old woman who triumphantly refused to vacate it, claiming she would get car-sick if she swtiched places. I resigned myself to the hellish ride and braced against whatever hand and foot supports I could latch on to secure myself. We crossed over the Shyok river on the Saling bridge and got on the rocky road to Hushe. The scenery was awesome but I was too busy hanging on for dear life to pay much attention to anything else. The jeep lurched around like a bucking bronco and it was really hard to hang on to the metal railings. One of the side benefits of being packed so tight was that there was less room to be thrown around. At this point we passed through a village and were flagged down by a gaggle of 4-5 young women. I watched in disbelief as the women cajoled the driver into letting them get on the jeep. Finally, after much arguing back and forth, the chicks just hopped in as if it was business as usual. Given the very tight quarters there was no way they could avoid being jammed against strange men -- a definite taboo on Pakistani public transport. I personally didn't even think they would fit but they somehow manged to squeeze themselves into the couple of remaining crevices on the already overflowing jeep. I was jammed next to one of them and we were practically dry-humping with every jolt of the jeep. The college guy gave me a leering look and asked me if I was enjoying myself. Unfortunaltey I was too busy keeping upright to derive any frotteuristic pleasures from the current conditions. The old woman was definitely not lying about car sickness. She loosed forth some unbelievable projectile vomiting after about an hour into the journey. Judging from it, she had had nothing but tea all day. Mercifully she didn't puke in the jeep. This was truly one of the toughest journeys I have ever suffered. After about an hour the congestion eased a bit as many people started getting off at various villages. By the time we got to Kande the situation was almost tolerable. Along the way we passed picturesque villages where people were harvesting and threshing wheat. It almost looked like the Pakistani equivalent of a Norman Rockwell postcard. In Kande everyone got off the jeep. They invited me to get off and stay with them with a view to doing the K6 Base Camp trek which starts in Kande. But I had my eyes set on bigger game and declined. After Kande

the jeep was empty, the driver and his assistant invited me to sit up front but I declined. It was actually nicer to sit in the back and have a 360 degree view of the awesome granite spires that were looming over us. The drive from Kande to Hushe didnt take more than 45 minutes. Not bad takings for the jeep driver for an extra 500Rs. He dropped me off at the Laila Peak camping ground. The place was deserted and closed as was just about everything else in sight. The village was pretty much as I remembered it from the last time. There were more buildings being built including a mosque and some hotels. A gaggle of curious kids gathered around me. One of them was the son of Hamza the owner of Laila Peak CG. He bustled forward importantly, opened up the place and ushered me in. I dumped all my gear in the lawn and chilled out for awhile. A cop rolled around and made me sign his register. He also instructed me to tell him where I was going before I left on my trek. Apparently they have gotten much more strict about tracking trekkers. It was at this point that I made the disturbing discovery that my almost new Panasonic FZ20 had stopped focusing. No doubt the dusty jolty jeep ride had done nothing for its dainty electronics. I repeatedly tried to reboot it but to no avail. This pissed me off so much that I was almost looking for any excuse to cut this trip short and get out of this camera-cursed place. It was on a trek in the Gondogoro valley where my trusty Canon Point and shoot had failed me, and it certainly seemed like a disturbing repeat of that experience. Fortunately I had a backup camera as well as a camcorder. I made myself some pasta and tuna in the kitchen and setup my tent. The two kids (owner Hamza's son and his buddy), watched me curiously and tried to help. Hamza showed up later, he was much as I remembered him, maybe a little greyer and older. We discussed various trekking options. He wanted me to try the realtively easy trek to Masherbrum Base Camp but I had my heart set on the K7 Base Camp trek. He told me that the route to K7 was dangerous because the glacier had “gone down” this year, necessitating a rope to negotiate the tricky moraine descent on to Chogolisa Glacier. For some reason I just kept pushing K7 Base Camp, so he agreed to find a porter who had done this recently so we could reevaluate the conditions based on current information.

Day 2- Sun 19 Aug 2007, Hushe to Shaischo: Up early around 8 am. Ali, Hamza's son and my porter from 2000 had shown up during the night in his jeep. Apparently the jeep was his new means of livelihood. We exchanged some small talk while I tried to get my camera to work. After numerous reboots and gentle slapping of the lens barrel, it started to work again. There were some stupendous views of Masherbrum towering at the head of the valley, and I got in a few good shots. Hamza rounded up a 18 year old punk from the fields to serve as a porter. It was a tall skinny and incerdibly grungy guy named Mohammad Ali. It didn't look like he had showered or even washed his face in a while. However, despite his obvious lack of hygiene, he claimed to have recently portered up to K7 Base Camp and thought the trek was doable. We quickly agreed on details of his wages -- Rs. 280 per stage and I would provide food. We quickly did an inventory of my gear and food, and I gave a bunch of extra gear to Hamza for safe-keeping. I bought some tea, flour and sugar from the small store in town. The store keeper was apparently also the local game warden. He had a picture of himself with a Markhor they had captured last winter. Apparently the Marhkor had been driven down into the lower valley after being injured by a snow leopard, they had managed to capture it and eventually handed it someone from FCNA Gilgit for placement in a zoo. The Markhor looked gigantic in the picture, almost the size of a small horse. I think it was partly a trick of camera angle and the store keeper/game warden's short stature. Despite packing at full speed it still took me a while to get ready. I also cooked up and ate some food before packing up the stove. Ali showed some pictures a hunter had mailed him from Norway. Apparently this guy had come all the way from Norway and paid a large sum to get a permit for hunting a Markhor. The photos of him posing with the dead Markhor were quite depressing.
The day was mostly clear with a few clouds. We set off on the trek around 1pm, winding our way past the village huts and wheat fields. At the outskirts of the village we were joined by a short dude dressed in western clothes and wearing ear-phones. He apparently ran the hotel/store at Shaischo and just "happened" to be going there. I suspected that his main purpose was to shake me down for camping money. These suspicions were later proved correct. We initially trudged along as a group, I stopped frequently to take pictures as the porter went ahead. This hotel dude followed me like a shadow and would stop whenever I stopped. Finally I told him to buzz along since I was going to take my sweet time. The days was fairly warm and I stopped to filter water from a stream near Odungstan. The view to Aling Peak was quite cloudy. Two visits to this area and I have yet to see these peaks on a clear day. After rounding the corned at Darya Chowk I was treated to a stupendous view of a couple of razor sharp pointy peaks at the foot of Gondogoro Valley. These were not particulary tall, but had the classic mountain shape and were festooned with a bevy of precariously perched glaciers. I took several pictures of these beauties as I slowly made my way in solitude. The summer settlement at Odungstan was totally deserted, many of the huts seemed shuttered and empty. Only evidence of life was big flock of crows. I reached Shaischo in about 5 1/2 hours, much slower than last time I was here. I guess age and weight gain are taking their toll. I ran into a local guide and two Spaniard doctors who were out for a day hike. The doctors were volunteering in the village and I had seen their tents on my way out. I soon crossed a bridge and made it to camp. There were some great alpenglow views to Namika and the peaks (K6, K7, Hasina) at the head of Charakusa valley. The porter and hotel dude were hanging out together, the porter was singing tuneless songs to the accompaniment of a drum. As I would soon discover, he fancied himself as a singer and hummed and sang quite a bit on the trail. The hotel guy offered me some tea and invited me to pitch a tent in the hotel's walled encosure. I knew better than to fall in his trap and opted to pitch my tent far away, next to a nice stream lined with willow trees. I did warily accept his offer of tea when he assured me it was on the house. The porter took out the foodstuffs and cooked up some rice. Apparently he had worked as a cook at some hotel in Lahore a couple of years ago and he thought very highly of his culinary skills. The food wasnt bad and he took his half off to the hotel to share with his buddy. I warmed up some ground beef curry (Aloo Keema) from a can and added it to the rice to make it more palatable, and then joined them at the hotel. After dinner and some small talk I retired to my tent. I was feeling pretty grungy and bathed in some water from the stream before hitting the sack. sumptuous dinner.

Day 3, Monday 20 Aug, 2007, Shaischo-Chogolisa: Woken fairly early by the porter rattling around outside to get the tea started. I dragged myself out and gave him the cooking material. He cooked himself some Chapattis and applied lots of cooking oil to turn them into Parathas. I was flabbergasted to see that he had already used up more than a third of our cooking oil supply and told him to cut back a little. As usual, despite my efforts to hurry, it took me a couple of hours to eat and get ready. I also used a fairly clean outhouse that had been constructed by some foreigners to keep the area clean. The hotel guy (Azhar?) showed up at the last minute and demanded a camping fee of Rs. 200. I told him to buzz off, we exchanged some angry words. He insisted that he pays the village committee Rs. 50,000 per year to run this place and collect camping fees. I told him there was no way I was going to pay him without verifying his claims of entitlement to camping fees from the village committee. The porter sided with his buddy but I held firm and left with Azhar's eyes boring a hole in my back. We crossed a wide rocky stream bed before beginning a steep ascent up a juniper-studded hill. I was definitely feeling the altitude as I huffed and puffed up that hill.A little bit of guilt nagged at me for stiffing that guy out of a measly $3 and I felt like some bad karma had crept in to my trek. Considering that you can actually get a hotel room in Skardu for Rs. 200-300, this camping fee was clearly an attempt to fleece tourists without providing any services. Even the toilet had been bequeathed to them by foreigners. The porter kept racing ahead and then waiting for me to catch up, then he would exhort me to hurry up. This got really tiresome in short order. We followed the true-right moraine of the Tsarak-tsa (aka Charakusa) Glacier up the valley. There were almost vertical granite cliffs towering above us and the danger of rockfall was ever-present. We had to negotiate several rock-slide areas where the trail was obliterated by huge boulders. The trail was rocky even in the best of places and predictably, I soon twisted my ankle and started to hobble a bit. The views were pretty stupendous with Namika towering across the rubble-covered glacier. This peak was first climbed by Simon Yates -- the guy from "Touching the Void" who didn't break his leg. In a couple of hours we reached a shady little ablation valley with a small spring hidden among the rocks. The book called it Tikchumik but the local name for it was "Chankarli". Here I broke out some snacks (biscuits if I recall) and the porter boiled some water for tea. At this juncture the porter started mentally preparing me for the descent to Chogolisa Glacier. At the village he had been pretty dismissive of the problem but now he described a fairly harrowing, almost vertical descent down the moraine. I was pretty worried, but in a display of bravado, told him that if he could go down it with his heavy load, I could too. So the long day wore on and we trudged up the moraine. The trail became trickier and fainter and the ablation valley soon ended as the moraine narrowed down. We had to bush-whack a little through wild rose bushes as we followed the faint trail. There were a few places where a false step would take you down quite a ways to the glacier. Finally, the moment of truth arrived as we reached the end of the moraine. I looked down the almost vertical chimney of loose morainal rubble and I must confess that it was a daunting sight. Mercifully it was not more than 40 ft. The porter went down first, lowering himself very carefully, grabbing footholds and handholds. Once he was down, I commended my soul to God and started down. The steepness was unnerving but the looseness of the rock was even more scary. Every foothold and handhold had to be tested before I could commit to it. Lingering on a hold was perilous as things shook loose very quickly. I managed to get down the chimney and breather a sigh of relief thinking the ordeal was over. The last part was getting down a large boulder that offered no grabbing points. I put my foot on a large basketball sized rock that was buried apparently solidly in the crumbling moraine wall. It suddenly gave way and next thing I knew, I was slipping and running down in a shower of rocks. Initially I tried to out-run the rocks, but then I lost my footing and took a pratt fall in the rubble. Thankfully the rocks I had dislodged did not hurt me, being deflected by the backpack, but I bashed my foot pretty hard on when I fell. All this happened in a split second. The porter ran over with concern and alarm writ large on his face and helped me up. I stood up shakily and did a quick check of self and gear. Everything seemed OK except for the hurt ankle and my trekking poles that refused to lock. I wasted a good 10 minutes trying to get them to work before we started moving. The route quickly descended onto the rubble-strewn Chogolisa glacier. My foot was hurting like hell so I put a neoprene brace on it. The daylight was beginning to fade and the porter was very unhappy with our rate of progress. The next campsite with water was a good two hours away. The glacier made for hard walking as the porter followe some invisible trail. Occasionally I saw a cairn or two but I certainly would have been lost if I were on my own. The sun soon disappeared behing the towering peaks and cold winds sighed over the glacier. The porter suggested that we spend the night on the glacer. I initially opposed the idea and we argued back and forth as we approached the moraine on the other side. There was no room to pitch a tent in the glacial debris and the only water source was dribbles of silty water. We were at an angry impasse when we spotted a small pool of clear green water a little bit below the trail. It was amost 6 pm and light was fading fast as I scrambled down and scouted out the area. As luck would have it, there was a small relatively flat area near the pool that was suitable to pitch a tent. I told the porter to come on down and then we quickly went about setting up camp. The porter seemed really out of it and even more tired than I was. He mooched my ground tarp , since it looked like it might rain overnight. I was wondering about his sleeping arrangements and watched curiously as he dug out his minimalist setup. He was using a Ridgerest sleeping pad and a filthy Sierra Designs sleeping bag. He plunked those down next to my tent, put the tarp over it and weighed it down with rocks and he was all set. He seemed a little sick and complained that he had "cholera". I gave him some Immodium and cooked up some food for us. The scenery in this area was superlative. The glacier had made for tough going, but it provided a spectacular foreground for the massive bulk of Cogolisa Peak which towered in the distance. We had finally reached the white ice and big seracs of Charakusa (Tsarak-tsa) Galcier. We were almost at the junction of Chogolisa Gl. where it merged with the larger Charakusa. Pyramid-shaped Chogolisa Peak loomed at the head of the eponymously glacier. Wild, unexplored moarines ran along the sides of Chogolisa Glacier, I asked my porter if there were trails up the moraine leading to Chogolisa peak but he didn't think there were any. On the other side of Chogolisa Peak lay the fabled Baltoro Glacier trek to Concordia. The moon peeked though the clouds as I was cooking dinner, and bathed everything in soft light. Truly an unforgettable sight which made some of the hardships of the day seem worthwhile. I was exhausted by the time I had finished dinner and crawled into my tent. It was pretty windy and dusty on the glacier and I just hoped it wouldn't cause any camera malfunctions tomorow. It rained brielfy at night, producing some grumbling from the porter, but I turned a deaf ear. The last thing I wanted to do was share the tent with a guy who hadn't washed in months and had diarrhea to boot. <.

Day 4: Tue, 21 Aug 2007, Chogolisa to K7 Base Camp,

We were up fairly around 6 am as porter insisted that we needed to pick up our pace. Glaciers, in general, are weird, almost haunted places. Even though you are on seemingly solid ground, things are always a little unstable and you feel at the edge of peril. I had slept fitfully at night and was only too glad to get out and start moving. I ate some of the leftover food from last night but the porter refused to eat anything. He also started showing a mean temper, implying that I was short-changing him somehow by not providing enough food. We argued back and forth with him threatening to walk away and I threatening him with reporintg him to the policeman. At this point he revealed that prison was nothing new for him, he had already spent a year in prison recently for getting into a fight with a policeman. This gave me much food for thought as we packed up and started hiking. Its one thing to be jawing with a callow youth spouting off steam, and quite another to be hiking solo with a hardened criminal who may push you into a crevasse and walk away. Anyway we both walked on in sullen silence and soon reached the moraine. The climb up this moraine, though easier than the steep descent on the other one, was no picnic. We switch-backed up a very steep, unstable slope. Many places required some nimble footwork and balance to avoid dangerous falls. I breathed a big sigh of relief after reaching the top but there was the porter, glowering and urging us to move on. I got pissed off at hime and things deteriorated further. Soon we were no longer on speaking terms. He would race ahead and then sit on a rock and wait for me, I would pass him without a word and then he would soon overtake me again. Rinse, lather, repeat. Ther ablation valley that I was hiking up was markedly more lush and verdant compared to the lower one. I think that main difference is that cattle cannot cross the glacier and graze here. I was finally able to revel in the profusely blooming wildflowers. It was great to take some photos with a little color to offset the starkness of the mountains. We finally came to a stream and a flat camp area called "Ankum" after about an hour of hiking. I was out of water and spent some time filtering and filling up my bottles. There were a couple of stone shelters and some bushes in the sandy camp area. The place was deserted but it was easy to imagine large trekking groups camped here. It would have been pretty hard to reach it last night, so the choice of camping on the glacier was the right one. The porter sprung another interesting tid-bit of information -- we would have to descend onto the glacier and walk on it for a couple of hours before reaching the base camp. When I asked him how dangerous it was compared to the harrowing experiences of yesterday, he responded with a hideous leer that I would soon find out for myself. About 15 minutes up the trail from Ankum we came to a stream with steep crumbly banks. Crossing it required considerable concentration , it wasn't that the banks were very high, they were just as loose as can be allowing few foot placements. The moraine soon petered out and we headed back down to the glacier. Much to my relief, this part of the glacier was white ice and offered very good traction. The porter was waiting expectantly to see how I handled it, and was somewhat disppointed to see how comfortable I was with walking on the ice. This was almost exactly like the glacier walking I had done on Rupal Glacier during the Nanga Parbat trek. This glacier had even bigger ice mushroom pinnacles with large bablanced boulders. There were a few crevasses too but they were totally exposed and easy to avoid, or jump over. We made good time in this section but all too soon the porter started heading back towards the debris-covered margins of the glacier. Soon we were back to scrambling and boulder-hopping on the loose crumbly shit as I gazed longingly at the white ice a stone's throw away. As we traveresed below a steep rock tower, I was startled to hear human voices echoing from the top. The porter became very agitated and started pestering me to walk or run since the climbers above is were "warning" us for rockfall. While I was acutely aware that his fears might be well-founded, the truth of the matter was that I couldn't walk any faster without risking a knee or ankle injury. He practically sprinted away while I plodded behind, keeping a wary eye on the cliff for rock fall. Eventually I made my way up the morine, following cairns and the faint trail to a place where the portere was resting and waiting. He pointed out yet another hurdle, a washout above a roaring stream that was hurling down on to the glacier and vanishing under it. Again he was disappointed to see me walk across in a fairly non-chalant manner, using my poles and testing the ground before committing. This was the last obstacle and I could see the vast plain that formed K7 base Camp. The home stretch -- so to speak. Even though I was not feeling hungry, I forced myslef to stop and down some dried mangoes (Trader Joe's brand, not bad). The porter had vanished as usual after warning that we had a long way to go. Turned out that he was just pulling my leg, I was no more than 10 minutes from the camp site. I had finally arrived ! The camping area was somewhat dusty, the sparse vegetation having been wiped out by years of trampling by hob-nailed boots. There was a rock wall marking the porter shelter and huge rock cairn with ae embedded plaque from a South Korean expedition. The nationalistic tone of the plaque was unmistakable as it touched on diverse topics like fallen mountaineering comrades and the invention of the printing press in Korea long before Europe etc. I gave it a quick read before using at as my washing area. This being the only good place to put soap, towel and hang the water bag. As I set up the tent, the porter started making tea and cooking rice. Now that we were finally here, his mood seemed to have improved markedly. Whether it was the altitude or the exhaustion, I felt absolutely no hunger. There was very striking almost pyramid shaped peak to the south, appropriately named Nayza (The Spear) Peak, this is where we had heard the climbers shouting to each other. We could make even out a couple of dots silhouetted on the summit. I dug out the binoculars and checked them out. It would have been a very cool climb with tons of rappels on the way down. When the porter offered me food, I refused. He thought I was pissed off from the earlier arguments and looked genuinely penitent. I finally relented and had some just to pacify him. I was keen to explore the area so we decided to set out and explore the area. The porter took his bedding along since he and I had agreed that he should shack up with the porters that would no doubt be accompanying the climbing expedition. We crossed the braided fan from a stream and soon reached the camp of the expedition. I was expecting a vertiable army of porters and climbers based on misguided notions from watching movies like "Vertical Limit". It was somewhat anticlimactic to see that there were only a handful of MSR 4-season tents scattered around the clearing. Instead of an army of porters there was only one surly cook peeling vegetables in the kitchen tent and a young bearded liasion officer hanging out in the mess tent. I engaged the LO in polite chit-chat while the porter received a frosty welcome from the cook. The expedition was American, and the climbers included a guy named Steve House. He is from the Pacific NW and gained fame for his alpine-style ascent of Nanga Parbat's Rupal face a couple of years ago. Apparently they were out climbing some of the smaller peaks to acclamatise before trying for K6 summit. After drinking a cup of tea with the LO, I carried on until the trail ended at the moraine of a glacier coming down from K7 and joining the massive Charakusa glacier. The weather had been cloudy most but the sun came out briefly to mark the highpoint of my trek. I snapped a few pictures of the magnificent glacial wasteland before turning back. On my way back I picked up the crest-fallen porter, apparently the cook had no desire to share food or shelter with him and had given him the bum's rush. It was getting pretty dark by the time we got back to camp. I was getting some last alpenglow shots when I saw the three climbers coming back from their climb. I went up and said hello and chatted with them briefly. I wasn't sure if they would be civil or too full of themsleves. They seemed nice enough, Steve was a quiet, unassuming guy of medium build. He pointed out the names of some of the prominent peaks. His buddy Vince seemed like the more brash personality and the third guy was from Eastern Europe and stayed pretty quiet during the exchange. The temperature dropped very quickly at 15000 ft (4600 m) once the sun went down. I piled on some warm clothing and hit the sack. The porter tried to get the tarp but it was firmly ensconced under the tent. I told him that we would worry about it if it started raining. The clouds did look pretty threatening so I put most of the stuff in the tent vestibules as a precaution.

Day 5, Wed, 22 Aug 2007 , K7 Base Camp to Ankum : It rained very briefly in the early dawn hours. I felt guilty about not givin the tarp to the porter, but he was in a fairly sheltered enclosure with some cliff overhang. We had discussed whether to rest a day here or just head on down. The porter was all for going back but I wanted to enjoy the scenery I had worked so hard to reach. What settled the matter was the cloudy overcast sky in the morning. Up to now the general pattern had been clear mornings with increasing cloudiness in the afternoon. However today even the morning was overcast and it looked like it was only going to get worse. My ankle was hurting pretty bad so I wavered a little between staying or going. Finally I decided to pack up and head down to Ankum or beyond. An interesting feature of this campsite was a makeshift toilet entirely made out of stone slabs. It had a little privacy wall, a hole with stone slabs for foot placement and didn't stink too much either. There was another older one nearby which had been covered up after it had served its purpose. It was nice to see the climbing expeditions weren't trashing the place. I noticed very little litter in the area. A little bit of pale watery sunlight came through as we were leaving so I got a few shots of Neza Peak. Soon we were back on the glacier, the porter rushed ahead and soon vansihed from sight. This meant that I had to do my own route-finding among the crevasses and sizable streams running on top of the glacier. It was a little nerve-wracking since a careless step could have serious consequences near a crevass. The glacier was not flat at all, it was shaped in heaping mounds , somewhat like sand dunes that hampered one's ability to scout the terrain and see potentiaanticipate crevasses. The ice was not particularly slippery but still required caution when the slope got steeper. I managed to work my way towards the middle of the glacier which offered relatively unbroken walking but I knew I was veering off the route we took coming in yesterday. Finally, much to my relief, I spotted the porter sitting among the boulders. He steered me back on course and soon we were back to walking on the moraine. My ankle was hurting really bad and every step was causing sharp stabs of pain. It was abundantly clear that I would not be crossing Chogolisa Glacier today. I worked my way down the ablation valle and soon I could see a large expedition camped at Ankum. I decided that this was going to be my stop as well. It was pretty early in the day, about noon or 1 pm but I felt positive that my ankle couldn't take any more punishment. The porter was already jabbering away with the porters who appeared to be from Hushe. They were all hanging out in the shelter with a roof fashioned from a large tarp. I briefly sopke with the Sirdar who was from a village farther down the Hushe Valley (Machulu). Apparently this was a group of 3 German trekkers (2 men, 1 woman) with a retinue of 10 porters. I quickly setup my tent as the first drops of a downpour started pelting down and raising small puffs of dust. My ankle was killing me but I managed to secure all my gear under the vestibules before crawling in and taking some pain-killers. It started coming down in earnest soon thereafter and I was extremely grateful that we had reached this place and setup camp before it hit. I dozed away for about 3-4 hours as it rained sporadically, at times coming down very heavily. About 4 pm things started to clear up a bit and I crawled out of my tent. The rest had definitely helped my ankle. I chit-chatted with the Germans a little bit. Apparently the woman had been up here before a few years ago and was returning with her friends. All of us were cmaped in the narrow ablation valley, sandwiched between huge cliffs toweering above us on one side and the moraine of Charakusa Galcier on the other. I climbed up on the moraine with my binoculars and spent a good 45 minutes soaking in the scenery. The moraine was unnervingly narrow at the top and I was barely able to find a spot wide enough to find a perch. Below me the heavily crevassed glacier spread out. On the opposite side was a complex of jagged peaks and spires called "Parhat Peak" according to the porter. Various sized glaciers tumbled down the almost vertical slopes and merged into Charakusa Glacier. K6 and neighboring peaks were swathed in clouds. but the clouds were moving fast and occasionally revealing the summits. I gave the porter cooking supplies so he could start dinner. We were running low on food stores and I decided to break out the lentils. The porter carried off the stuff into the snoky interior of the porter shleter and I set off up the valley with my cameras. The weather had improved considerably and I reveled in the superb views, climbing up the moraine occasionally to get better vantage points for photography. My ankle felt much better as I wandered around without a heavy pack in my Teva sandals. I walked abck to the tricky stream crossing but decided against crossing its crumbly banks. The moon came out as I was returning to camp and I noticed yet another gigantic peak that had been concealed earlier on. It was Link Sar which is even taller than K6 at about 7000m. It was peaking betwee two granite spires and I couldn't resist setting up a few tripod-assisted slow-shutter shots. It was getting dark on my return and I encountered my porter and one of his friends who had come looking for me. It was nice to see his concern for my safety. This mixture of caring and truculence was the most enduring impression I had of Mohammad Ali the porter. He definitely pissed me off on many occasions with his greed and orneriness,but he also showed a more caring side once in a while. Back at camp, the lentils proved impossibly hard to cook at 15000 ft elevation. Despite draining almost all the fuel they remained a little crunchy. I heated up some canned curry and mixed it in with the steamed rice and lentils to make it more palatable. The porters engaged in some song and banter at night but I was too tired to observe any of this and just hung out in my tent. I had reached a stage of grunginess where mountain panoramas had lost a lot of their lustre, I longed for a hot shower and a soft bed.

Day 6, Thu Aug 23, 2007 Ankum to Hushe:

Up early as usual. The Germans were moving on up to K7 Base Camp, their party was raising quite a ruckus while getting ready. I took my time packing up just so I could have some privacy. Also cooked up some pasta and tuna, which was a welcome change after a steady diets of curries, lentils and rice. I was guarding my stuff like a hawk since I didn't want anything to get stolen in the general confusion of the German party's departure. I was wondering what do with the empty can when the porter settled the debate by drop-kicking it over the moraine. We started hiking down and soon came to the dreaded Chogolisa Glacier. I took a brief break here before commencing down the steep trail. It was nerve-wracking but mercifully uneventful. The trekking poles proved invaluable here. Once we were down on the glacier , we scrambled up and down the shifting glacial rubble. The porter advised me to be cautious and follow his route since there were hidden crevasses under the rocks. My weight could trigger a sudden collpase of the seemingly solid rubble of rocks that were wedged in the maw of a crevasse. I followed him in chastised silence until we came to the chimney that had been so hazardous only two short days ago. He went up first, dumped the duffle bag and came back down. I went up with him following close below, practically trying to push me up. I told him to quit the pushing and move back. Going up was a little easier but there were a couple of tense moments when the earth started crumbling under my foot. Anyway, I made it up safely and the porter followed . We were both mightily relieved that this major hurdle can been crossed. After a brief break we shouldered our packs and started down. The weather had been iff all day with brief rain spats. I amde slow progress by myself, the porter having vanished out of sight as usual. My ankle was hurting a lot and at times I had to stop just to get a respite from the pain. I met up with the porter a few times, he urged me to hurry since rockfall danger was high after rain. I finally put on both ankle braces and hobbled along. A couple of porters from the German party passed me as I was putting on the brace. They were returning from K7 Basecamp, just shows how fast these guys walk. By the time I reached the hill near Shaischo, I could feel a dull throbbing pain in my knee as well. The idea of setting up camp at Shaischo begain to seem very attractive as I negotiated the wide rocky streambed to Shaischo. The porter was hanging out with his buddies. The old dude known as "chairman" was also lounging around. Apparently he lived here most of the time and watched out for snow leopards. I had seen his lamp moving around on the hill the night I camped here. I decided to break for lunch and evaluate the knee/ankle situation. The food situation was pretty precarious so I dug out some ramen noodles, boiled up some unfiltered stream water and cooked them. Meanwhile the hotel guy showed up again and started pestering me, the "chairman" chimed in and said the camping fee was in fact sanctioned by the village committee. After some arguing back and forth I shelled out Rs. 100 just to shut up the hotel asshole. An interesting thing I learnt from the chairman was that they now had "leopard insurance" which reimbursed them for any livestock lost to the leaopards. This kept them from hunting the last few leopards to extinction. After lunch I weighed camping but it was still early enough that I reckoned I could make it to Hushe by evening. I told the porter to go ahead since I knew the way pretty well from here. He left, along with the chairman who had some business in the village. My ankles were hurting but I had cooled them in the stream and I found that they hurt less without the compression of the ankle brace. I made my way back the now familiar trail to Hushe, I saw a couple of women herding their yaks near Odingstan but apart from that I was alone. It started getting dark about as I approached the outlying fields of Hushe. I stumbled around in the dark past deserted fields and shuttered huts. The path had seemed straight-forward enough with the porter leading the way on the way out, but now I was lost in a maze of fields with no clear trail and a valley between me and the twinkling lights of "downtown" Hushe. I stumbled around for a good hour in the dark, trying to follow the path of least resistance towards the lights. Someone seemed to be signalling to me with a flashlight, I thought maybe the porter was trying to steer me. After a few wrong turns I finally managed to make my way back to the Laila peak campground, totally exhausted after almost 12+ hours of walking. Hamza showed up soon afterwards. He seemed very impressed with the trek and said so repeatedly. Mohammad Ali showed up soon afterwards, his older broather was also hanging around the place. The older brother was much cleaner and better dressed, apparently he was a guide or something. Anyway I paid him his wages as well as a tip. Then I began the sordid task of arranging a ride out of town. I was sick of feeling grungy and wanted to take a shower. Hamza professed ignorance of any public jeeps commuting between the village and Khapalu even though many people elsewhere had reported that such a transport was in place now. He wanted me to book his son's jeep to get to Khapalu. I went with him to his house where he radioed Kande village. By some "coincidence" his son had just come back from a trip and was just hanging around the radio joint in Kande. The gist of their conversation was that the Saling bridge over Shyok river had been damaged and the only way required going over a more distant bridge. I told the guy I would pay Rs 800 or else would camp here indefinitely and do dayhikes. After siome bickering they agreed. Hamza's wife was sitting in the middle of the room cooking tea in a pretty traditional setting over a wood fire. She offered me some tea and I sat there on some floor mats and had tea with them before returning to the camping area. I was absolutely knackered by this time, I should have been ravenously hungry but strangley I had to force myself to eat a few biscuits and trailmix before hitting the sack. I also added an additional condition that I wanted to leave at 5 or 6 in the morning which meant I was going to get little sleep. was ready to hit the sack.

Day 7, Fri Aug 24 Hushe-Skardu:

Even through I was dead tired I had no problem getting up at dawn, thanks to the imam of the Shia mosque next door. He started calling the faithful to prayer on a loudspeaker and then launched into some chanting or sermon of sorts. I dragged myslef out of the tent and started packing. Hamza's son Ali had shown up in the middle of the night and was sleeping in the jeep. It seemed that he preferred to stay away from the wife and kids as much as possible. We left before runrise and made our way past deserted streets. Ali grumbled about the early start and what he considered to be a very low fare. I tried to ignore him and focus on the scenery. We made quite a few stops to pick up the usual mixture of people and goods. Everybody seemd to know everybody and I was the only guy who seemed to be paying for the ride. Either they are keeping running tabs or bartering goods and services in exchange for transportation. I orginally suspected that these guys were trying to hoodwink me about the broken bridge but I was wrong. We had to cross over the Hushe river on a rickety bridge and drive up on to a desolate ridge before winding our way down through more villages before reaching the main road via a military bridge over the Shyok. We fetched into town after about a 3 hour trip and I lost no time in booking the front seats on the next van to Skardu. After a farewell cup of tea with Ali and some breakfast I boarded the van. The trip to Shkardu was uneventful, a lot less ID checking than before. We fetched up in Skardu around 1. I made a beeline for the New Hilton and checked in. Bought a chance ticket for the flight to Pindi. After a luxurious shower and shave I started feeling human again. I spent the rest of the sleeping and recuperating from the trek. I had definitely lost some weight on the trek, the pants were fitting better. At night I wandered the town, ate a large dinner of chicken tikka at the little shop across from army barracks, and also checked my e-mail at the COMSATS computer center. There were a bunch of Canadian and American climbers sitting in the cyber-cafe planning their trip to K7 base camp and I gave them some helpful tidbits of information. Called home and let my family know I was alive and in one piece.

The Journey Home, Aug 25-26, 2007 : Up early next morning and took a cab to the airport bright and early. The guard took one look at my "chance" seat and told me to wait outside. Others with confirmed seats strutted past looking smug and self-important. This airport showed off some of the worst aspects of Pakistani society. People were nicer to others of their ethnic group, the local officials were letting people jump the queue. Civil and Army officials with inflated egos arrived at the departure lounge with a retinue of their bowing and scraping minions. The minions would try to outdo each other in helping with the luggage and making sure the airport guards did not obstruct the passage of their boss. The foreign tourist with mountains of fancy expedition gear arrived with their local guides, and were obsequiously ushered into the inner sanctum of the departure lounge. I had a bad feeling about the whole affair and it was amply confirmed as the crowd of standby flyers was finally allowed in. They mobbed the check-in counter and tried to somehow elbow their way on the plane. The guys begind the counter were extremely secretive about the priority order of the standby list. There were only 4-5 standby seats and they were awarded in a completely opaque and nepotistic manner. There was an army soldier trying to get on the plane who told me that the local PIA staff routinely gave preference to local people and Shias (the sect most prevalent in this area). I left feeling thoroughly disgusted with PIA and cursing the assholes for not running more flights at the height of toursit season. The soldier and I split a van back to town. The soldier was a medical nurse at the army hosiptal, he spouted a lot of racist invective at the locals as we trundled back to town. His outburst did not sit well with the van driver who overcharged us when he dropped us off in town. I managed to get the last seat on the NATCO bus leaving in the afternoon for Pindi. I treated the soldier to some tea as a consolation for snagging the last seat which he had also wanted. As I was heading back to the hotel someone slapped me on heartily on the back. I turned around to find Mohammad Ali the porter grinning ear to ear. Apparently he was using his recently earned wages to travel down-country to Lahore and work in a hotel there during the winter. The NATCO bus was better than the bus I had taken last time, but that was not saying much. The clientelle was a mix of soldiers going home on leave and locals headed downcountry on business. There was a pregnant woman sitting one row behind me who puked almost non-stop all the way. We stopped for dinner at a grotty restaurant along the way. I managed to dose off during the night journey. The bus was stopped by police at 2 am in the Kohistan region. Apparently the risk of highway robbery by armed bandits was very high so the police made a convoy of vehicles and escorted them through the badlands. Our bus was the only vehicle so after an hour of waiting the cops jumped on and escorted us for considerable distance. I drifted off to sleep again, when I woke up again it was early morning and the bus was traveling through spectacular lush green mountains of Swat's Pattan area. This area would be great for a road trip in a private jeep (although recent Taliban activity has made this area probably indavisable for tourism). We stopped at a small hotel in Mingora for breakfast and then on towards Abbottabad. The bus broke down a little bit before Mansehra and we had to sit around and kill time for an hour or two while the driver fixed whatever was wrong with it. The rest of the journey went by quickly and soon I was back in Pindi. A short cab ride back to home and my 2007 adventure in the Karakorams was over.